The nearly six million people living with heart failure face a life of monitoring the disease in the event it worsens. This often involves traveling to a physician on a routine basis, but scientists have opened an avenue to in-home monitoring with a simple paper test strip.

To cut costs and increase patient’s engagement, scientists developed an at-home paper strip test to identify the antigens responsible for indicating progressive heart failure. The findings were published in ACS Nano.

The antigens, ST2 and BNP, are currently only identified by trained professionals with complex lab equipment. The paper strip test gives patients the ability to take control of their disease monitoring by including all aspects of analysis in an at-home test.

The test uses a 10 microliters sample of blood, with the strip glowing blue when detecting ST2 and green with detecting BNP. The stronger the concentration of antibodies means a more intense color, meaning a user is more likely heart failure to be progressing. Patients can then use the accompanying smartphone application to analyze information and send results to their physician, who can direct the patient in adjusting their medication dosage.

In 38 serum samples, the test could detect minimal concentrations of ST2 and BNP. These results were compared to U.S. Food and Drug Administration clinical methods to show a linear correlation for the reliability and stability of the test.

“Therefore, the developed UC-LFS platform is demonstrated to be highly sensitive and specific for sample-to-answer prognosis of HF, which holds great potential for risk assessment and health monitoring of post-treatment patients at home,” concluded first author Feng Xu and colleagues.